1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments of the present invention relate to a method and apparatus for searching a document directory hierarchy having classified documents according to a user query. More particularly, the embodiments of the present invention relate to a method and apparatus for performing a partitioned search within the classified documents according to the user query.
2. Background of the Invention
Information retrieval systems are used to search through large and numerous databases. Various search algorithms have been implemented to achieve the goal of efficient and accurate document retrieval. Searching for documents within a database, however, often results in a large number of documents being returned. Furthermore, such a search can often be unduly time consuming.
Yahoo!.RTM. is an information retrieval system which provides searching capabilities to Internet users at http://www.yahoo.com. However, although a user may initiate a search, Yahoo!.RTM. does not provide for a secondary, focused search, based upon the initial search. A Yahoo!.RTM. search may typically take several minutes. Moreover, the number of documents returned may be more than desired, forcing the user to wade through the documents with no indication of each document's relevancy. A need exists in the prior art for a more efficient method and apparatus for searching a database and retrieving documents from the database in response to a user query.